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Comment by temphn | Hacker News Reader

According to PBS, Race is an Illusion: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_General/000_00-Home.htm

Jared Diamond concurs: http://www.learntoquestion.com/resources/database/archives/0...

If you believe their arguments, there is no scientific basis for categorizing someone on the basis of race. Appearance is particularly hazardous.

Therefore, why can't Asians mark black on the application? Who is to say they are not black if they self-identify as black? According to PBS, Jared Diamond, and many sociology departments, it is impossible to administer a genetic test that distinguishes African Americans from Asians, so self-identification is the only measure that matters.

So: why would Asians simply self-identify as white? Why not self-identify as black?

If race just a sociocultural construct, well, many Asian Americans certainly are into rap music and cultural markers that are associated with socially constructed category of African American. So why aren't they black?

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I haven't read much on the subject, but the idea that races can't be separated based on genetics is either false, or due to the fact that we don't have enough sensitivity in the measurement.

Phenotypically, I can easily identify a black person vs. an asian person, with nearly 100% accuracy. What I'm seeing are phenotypic differences in hair type, skin colour, facial structure, etc. that are all defined by genetics.

It's ludicrous to think that I can't sort people into groups based on these apparent differences(and I'm talking broad racial categories, not Ukranians vs. Russians or anything). Ignoring that might be PC, but it's definitely not realistic.

Just to be clear, I'm not insinuating anything about intelligence, ability, or whatever. I'm just saying that to deny that there are distinct categories that humans can be classified into is unrealistic. There may be edge cases, but nobody would mistake one of China's 1.6 billion people for an east African.

You are 100% correct, and anyone can verify for themselves that you can predict geographic ancestry from saliva to an incredible level of detail:

https://www.23andme.com/ancestry/origins

Nevertheless, if you take for the sake of argument the fallacious concept that "geographic ancestry has no connection to genetics", then there is and should be nothing stopping an Asian American (or a European American for that matter) from self-identifying as an African American. Is a university going to start administering blood tests?

>Phenotypically, I can easily identify a black person vs. an asian person, with nearly 100% accuracy.

This is a rather hyperbolic statement. You concede edge cases, but the fluidity of phenotype means that it fails to map cleanly onto neatly delineated categories. We can look at the recent book describing the history of 'passing' reviewed here [1] for one of many examples.

>I haven't read much on the subject, but the idea that races can't be separated based on genetics is either false, or due to the fact that we don't have enough sensitivity in the measurement.

Again, I'd caution against letting your intuition be your guide on this topic. A cursory examination of the literature (i.e., 15 minutes on Google Scholar [2]) might lead you to the conclusion that: (1) genotype != phenotype, and (2) while we can reliably sort humans by ancestry using genetic information, there is variation within these clusters because the proportion of any individuals ancestry that arises from different populations also varies.

I think that the upshot is that the science is less useful when applied to a nebulous term like race, which involves a host of cultural, political and historical factors. The way we Americans define race in debates like these is a legacy of our binary 'one-drop rule' concepts of identity, and it isn't at all clear that appeals to science couched in sweeping generalizations have any connection to the biology.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/books/review/Arsenault-t.h...

[2]: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=genomics+race

> According to PBS, Jared Diamond, and many sociology departments, it is impossible to administer a genetic test that distinguishes African Americans from Asians

Are you sure Jared Diamond actually made that statement? It seems weird. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering mentions a study where genetic markers were found to predict self-reported race/ethnic group with a discrepancy of only 0.14%.

Of course Jared Diamond was wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Human_genetic_diversity:_Lew...

But many people accept his premises.

That is one of the worst entries on all of Wikipedia, and misrepresents what the sources say by undue weight. The clean-up of Wikipedia on these issues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...

will take a long time.

I don't think you even need to get into the "race is an illusion" argument to self-identify as a different race. I remember when I applied, all the applications asked the question with phrasing like "Which race do you consider yourself?" I wondered if there would be any consequence if I answered Black or Hispanic (I'm white). Probably not, I'd think, as they can't prove I don't "consider myself" one of those.

Surprising that it doesn't happen more often. Or maybe it does...

Your argument strongly misses the mark. While there may be dubious scientific basis for race, there is a very strong sociological importance for our construct of race. This is undeniable. Race as a sociological phenomenon is very real and thus makes sense to address it as such.

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